December 14, 2022
climate-change collaboration innovation innovation-in-water-challenge IWC winnersAccording to a regular survey carried out by YouGov , UK adults agree that the status of the environment is one of the top three most important issues facing the country today. Unsurprisingly, only issues regarding health and the economy rank higher in importance. However, environmental, economic and health-related challenges are undeniably interconnected.
Water environments, or “blue spaces”, have also been shown to improve our health both mentally and physically, providing the opportunity for relaxation or to take part in physical exercise activities. Further, new research released by the Mental Health Foundation shows that 65% of people find that being near water improves their mental health. It is therefore incredibly important that aquatic ecosystems across the UK continue to be carefully and conscientiously managed and maintained.
Aquatic ecosystems provide water for drinking, growing crops, manufacturing, energy and transport. They protect against erosion, flooding and the disposal of waste. essential for people – but also, wildlife and the planet. According to the National Biodiversity Network’s State of Nature 2019 report, over 40% of UK species are in decline, with 13% of freshwater and wetlands species threatened with extinction.
Do you have a brilliant idea to improve the environmental health and quality of our waters, benefitting both the environment and future generations of consumers? Take inspiration from case studies of three of the Innovation in Water Challenge winning projects that are working hard to do just this. You can also follow the initiatives’ progress and keep up to date with how you can win funding for your idea in future rounds of the competitions by signing up to the Innovation Fund newsletter
Many UK waterbodies are failing to achieve their targets under the Water Framework Directive. This is a complex challenge, and so far, solutions have been focusing on fixing single factors (such as water quality from discharges), without fully understanding and fixing the other pressures. This approach limits improvements to the ecological status of our water environments and restricts any wider environmental benefit.
The CatchmentLIFE project aims to develop a simple, user-friendly model to describe pressures and impacts on species and ecological communities. The model and supporting data will be packaged into ‘CatchmentLIFE’, a bespoke piece of software, which will show different sectors or land uses that are causing impacts and failures. This software will be widely accessible to non-experts and citizen scientists, linking to datasets from major UK organisations and allowing users to input and share their own data.
CatchmentLIFE will also support communities to understand the pressures on their local ecosystems, and what can be done about them. By testing for ‘what if’ scenarios, the tool is innovative and future-focused, allowing users to predict different pressures, including changes in land use and climate change, and their impact on species to improve the environment for future generations.
This is an industry-leading solution for river restoration and citizen science and will allow for greater collaboration between different sectors and the public, ultimately driving mutually beneficial outcomes for the water industry’s customers and the communities they live in. Customers will be positively connected to their environment, encouraging them to value water more, which ultimately leads to reduced demand and saving water and energy.
The project also benefits society as a whole by promoting community cohesion, encouraging collaboration on a local level. Volunteers feel valued as they have made a direct contribution to local conservation and restoration strategies. The project greatly benefits the environment, allowing users to understand how different catchment pressures affect habitats clearly and visually and to identify cost-effective solutions for improvements.
Ammonia is a pollutant occurring in wastewater that is toxic for aquatic life and can affect the ecological status of our rivers. Wastewater must be treated to reduce ammonia, however, for the most part, this treatment increases emissions, and no beneficial product is made. The recovery of ammonia, rather than just its treatment, presents an opportunity to make these pollutants valuable as well.
The Organics Ammonia Recovery project will convert ammonia recovered from wastewater and generate green hydrogen fuel. Traditional wastewater treatments are energy-intensive and only produce nitrogen which, though harmless, wastes the intrinsic value in ammonia. The project’s novel approach will contribute to the government’s green gas and renewable fuel agenda, accelerate the water industry’s journey to net carbon zero, improve the ecological status of rivers and test whether waste can not only be treated but also recovered to add value.
The pilot plant, at Howden, Newcastle, is under construction and is to be installed in the next twelve months. A well-rounded consortium of partners has been assembled to implement the project, bringing together experts from the renewable energy and environmental engineering sectors, engaging with the academic community for additional specialist expertise.
Northumbrian Water’s advice for others seeking to enter future rounds of the Innovation Fund competitions is to start building your partnerships early. Write a “bid-on-a-page” to concisely explain your idea to potential partners and cover the following points: What is the problem? What are you proposing? How does this benefit the customer? How is it innovative? What do you want from partners?
As a result of climate change, algae have begun to grow in reservoirs and cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, are appearing more frequently in British water. Blue-green algae produces two substances, geosmin and 2-MIB, which are not harmful to people’s health but do give off an earthy or musty taste and smell when consumed.
Water companies are facing more and more complaints from the public that their water supply has this taste and smell. Some customers can taste the substances even at extremely low concentrations – as little as five billionths of a gram per litre. The water industry currently has a good understanding of the triggers and the interactions of those triggers with environmental variables that impact the taste and smell of water. However, the sector lacks near real-time live data streams for predictive risk assessment of Taste and Odour Events.
The project will build on environmental DNA (eDNA) monitoring methodologies to detect algae in drinking water to improve its taste and smell. It aims to improve the speed of delivery of sample processing and results through a user-friendly data visualisation portal. This will include academic partners analysing data to provide interpretation of Taste and Odour risk level.
The knowledge and technology developed during the project will be made accessible to water companies, enabling them to take the process in-house or establish the system as an outsourced service. The project will also advance reservoir sampling protocols to address Taste and Odour risk monitoring and the knowledge and skills from Cardiff University will be transferred out to the reservoir labs to improve the water sector’s understanding of how to analyse eDNA.
Cyanobacteria production of Taste and Odour metabolites is a globally increasing problem that has been directly linked to climate change, as warmer waters spur increased algal growth. eDNA benefits water companies across the world by enabling water treatment for taste and smell to be optimised in advance of an increase in their frequency and magnitude expected from climate change. This will reduce treatment costs and maintain customer confidence in their tap water. Using eDNA monitoring will significantly aid understanding of each individual reservoir, helping to develop site-specific solutions to Taste and Odour risk and result in greater operational resilience.
Dŵr Cymru advises others interested in entering future rounds of the Innovation Fund competitions to ensure that their solution is well-defined and the outcomes for customers are clear in their application form.
Ofwat has established a £200 million Innovation Fund to grow the water sector’s capacity to innovate, enabling it to better meet the evolving needs of customers, society and the environment.
As part of the Fund, Ofwat ran the first Innovation in Water Challenge (IWC) from January to April 2021. The primary objective of the first IWC was to encourage new ways of working that go beyond business-as-usual innovation practices in the water sector, in particular, increasing and improving collaboration and building partnerships from within and outside the water sector.
The IWC looked for all types of projects – be they technology, culture, business practices, commercial models or something else – that addressed big challenges facing the water sector and that aligned with one or more of Ofwat’s five strategic innovation themes.
